Android - SMS are intermittently sent to wrong and seemingly random contact

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9392

by chrisbroadfoot • 16 years ago

57 60 16 years ago

code.google.com

On a somewhat related note, is this how people really communicate on the internets? Thinking the 954 prior requests will be ignored unless I ask Google to "fix it please" and reach the critical mass of 955 people asking them! Better add "quickly". Or better yet, just throw in a WTF, and multiple !!!.

I can only hope this one is ironic - "WTF!!?? I just want to say WTF?!!!?!? I will never buy an android phone again. This is the worst thing I can imagine in my life. Worse than the end of the world. Worse than the Doomsday. Just want to say WTF again!!!!!!!"

eli• 16 years ago

Reminds me of usenet in the 90s.

wladimir2• 16 years ago

Although people go over the top in rudeness, which doesn't help anyone, it's a fact that a lot of bug reports by customers to big companies get ignored. So the screaming is not entirely unwarranted.

DeusExMachina• 16 years ago

Not that it will take your complain any further, though.

harry• 16 years ago

I've made vague, childish threats towards AT&T and had immediate beyond-the-call-of-duty service in return.

viraptor• 16 years ago

Actually... it does make a difference in some situations. Just strip the comments and count it as "people affected". Sure - coogle code issues already implement "star"-ing issues, but it's just another indication of "number of less techy people affected".

Also, many people know that, "I want to escalate", shouting, saying you'll sue, writing directly to a person higher up, etc. often can reorder the priority of your complaint... so they do that. Of course it doesn't work that well on the internet. If I got a penny for each issue I needed to handle out of order, because the customer could shout really loud... I'd have a pound maybe ;)

newt3• 16 years ago

I watched a presentation online by a large software company who used to to do this. They deprecated this as "prioritization by whoever shouts the loudest". Once a crash-bug-reporting system was in place it simply went away, as they had accurate enough data on how many people were affected, and could prioritize based on that. This won't help if it's not a crash bug, but the criticism of "prioritization by whoever shouts the loudest" is still valid.

lwhi2• 16 years ago

"You cannot petition the lord with prayer."

Amen.

Jun8• 16 years ago

Right, this makes for some very interesting and funny reading. One of my favorites is:

"you FXXK guys! i hate the android,i love symbian!"

sigzero• 16 years ago

That poster probably got hit by the bug sending his love text to the wrong person.

ry0ohki• 16 years ago

Until TechCrunch (or someone?) posted an article pointing this flaw out last week the bug was not marked as critical. I think the drama is the way a lot of people feel about seeing what seems like an obviously critical bug as something google is ignoring.

I'm on several Android bugs that seem pretty bad, and they are either marked as not being fixed or being low priority, and sure enough i'll get a "WTF" update from a new person discovering them once or twice a week.

twymer• 16 years ago

I think the drama of a million "WTF?"'s are just people of the internet being, well, people of the internet.

The TechCrunch post, discussions here, etc more accurately portray people being annoyed that this critical bug is getting ignored.

eddieplan9• 16 years ago

I guess it's Google's way of saying legacy native non-webapp app is bad and hard to fix.

SkyMarshal3• 16 years ago

Remember that September many years ago that never ended?

Yeah, well, it never ended.

yanw• 16 years ago

http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9392#c1460

davidedicillo• 16 years ago

Interesting how everyone was talking about the iPhone alarm bug, but nobody (in the mainstream world) is talking about Android sending out your SMS to random people.

gloob• 16 years ago

It's possible that I just don't hang out with the cool people, but HN is the only place I've heard any discussion of either of them, and (before this link) I had seen exactly one link about each issue on the front page.

(Edit: Were they talking about it on the TV news? That's about the one obvious place where a lot of people would have heard about it that I would have completely missed. That would make sense, actually.)

daleharvey• 16 years ago

They talked about the iphone alarm bug on the news, it makes sense as well, the android bug is a fairly obscure and hard to trigger bug thats probably affected a few people, the iphone one affected everybody who uses the alarm

ergo982• 16 years ago

I did see the SMS bug mentioned on several mainstream news stories.

However to get mentioned in mainstream news there needs to be a compelling story: Someone claiming that they missed a flight, missed their wedding, etc -- something to make it a real human interest story. The Android bug would have been front and center if there were a confirmed "example" story where someone got fired or dumped on their wedding day or something because of a misdirected SMS.

newt3• 16 years ago

To go even further: if someone got dumped on their wedding day because they texted their other girlfriend and the fiancée found out, the media's story will be that it's their own fault and you can't rage at the phone software.

If you miss a flight due to the phone, you can.

pwpwp• 16 years ago

Unbelievable...

jakevoytko• 16 years ago

Well, not for long - it looks like they have a fix: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9392#c1460

rimantas2• 16 years ago

Isn't the situation such that this fix will take a long time to reach some of the users? Sometimes as long as "never"?

masklinn• 16 years ago

Well with a bit of luck it won't be 2.3 only, so yeah but not as likely. And I'm guessing carriers are getting bitched at as well, so they're probably looking into getting this one fixed soon-ish on the phones they "manage".

drivebyacct2• 16 years ago

There's no reason Google can't through a fixed Mms.apk on the Market and have it on old devices as well.

bumbledraven• 16 years ago

How does one view the code change associated with this fix?

elvirs• 16 years ago

Comment 1013 by xiaweihua94, Jan 02 (5 days ago) oh come on that's horrible, the message which is supposed to my girlfriend went to my boss. please fix it as soon as you guys can

mcantor• 16 years ago

Omigosh. I wonder if that's why my boss keeps looking at me funny lately. This is no good at all.

AndrewDucker• 16 years ago

The question is - if they have a fix, how will they get it out to people who aren't upgrading to 2.4 (or whatever the next version is)?

Are people with HTC Wildfires and the like going to be stuck with this bug permanently?

chrisbroadfoot• 16 years ago

Dot versions are pushed, too (I'm on 2.3.1 right now) - so I suppose it will be in 2.3.2 and presumably whatever stable version of Froyo.

I guess we'll see.

ZoFreX• 16 years ago

I look forward to getting the fix on my Motorola Milestone this time next year.

starnix172• 16 years ago

I'm sure they'll be fast to fix this, but how fast will phone manufactures be to push this out?

This is definitely a real bug, a few weeks ago a text intended for my girlfriend went to my mom. After you send a text and it goes through the phone changes the name to some random other contact and there's nothing you can do about it.

ot• 16 years ago

> a few weeks ago a text intended for my girlfriend went to my mom

Talk about worst case scenario!

jhamburger2• 16 years ago

I don't know about that. Considering the number of devices affected, chances are that some teenager has sexted their parents by now.

starnix172• 16 years ago

It wasn't anything bad, but it makes me very paranoid to text anything I wouldn't want public.

Andrenid• 16 years ago

This has me all paranoid now. I've never noticed it on my phone (and I send a LOT of texts for work as well as personally), but now i've got this itch to go back through every message stream for the last few months and check.

lwhi2• 16 years ago

Perhaps we should add a standard disclaimer to the bottom of all SMSs we send:

"If you are not the intended recipient of this message .. blah blah blah"

rebelde• 16 years ago

This is such a bad bug that I will be surprised if it doesn't get picked up by major news organizations.

The fact that this bug exists is bad enough, but realizing that your phone might never get the bug fix is even worse.

nkassis• 16 years ago

Hehe, makes me happier I don't use sms and just use email. If that happened to email I'd shoot the phone. Seriously that's an odd bug, anyone looked at the patch? How those the bug happen?

Android - SMS are intermittently sent to wrong and seemingly random contact

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